


His Favorite Christmas Story

by seibelsays



Series: The Adventures of Izzy [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019, F/M, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seibelsays/pseuds/seibelsays
Summary: Every Christmas has a story. This one involves polar bears.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Series: The Adventures of Izzy [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1411303
Comments: 34
Kudos: 156
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019





	His Favorite Christmas Story

**Author's Note:**

> For my Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019 square of Bucky riding a polar bear.

“Hold on, Janey, just hold on!” Darcy yelled, pressing her hands over her friend’s wound. “The cavalry will be here any second!”

“Darcy…” Jane’s voice was weak and her eyelids fluttered closed.

Darcy smacked her friend’s cheek. “Don’t you dare fall asleep on me! Eyes. Open. Understand?”

“Distress...signal?” Jane asked, gasping just a little as she forced her eyes open.

Darcy nodded and increased the pressure on Jane’s abdomen. “I got confirmation that it was received. Now they just have to follow the blinking dots on their map to find us.”

“Storm...Loki…”

Darcy blinked back tears. “Loki’s spell is weak, Janey,” she lied. “His power is fading. They’re going to find us in no time at all. We’re gonna be home in time to see Tony surprise Pepper with a giant bunny again.”

A crack of thunder shook the walls of the tiny safe house and Darcy grinned. 

“See?”

“JANE! DARCY!” Thor roared as he burst through the door. 

“Over here!” Darcy yelled.

Thor slid to his knees. “Jane,” he breathed, touching her head and quickly examining her.

“She got hit with something, I don’t know exactly. Loki tried to knock us out of the way, but between maintaining the storm for cover and fighting off those...dog things…” Darcy choked back a sob. “Tell me the Quinjet is right behind you and Hawkeye has a medkit on standby.”

Thor shook his head. “The storm is still too strong, it cannot land. I came down to find you alone.”

Darcy sighed. “Great,” she muttered. “Okay, well. Get Jane out of here. She needs more medical attention than I can provide in here.”

Thor shook his head. “I cannot fly you both out, not with Jane in this condition.”

“It’s a safehouse,” Darcy shrugged. “I’ll be bored as shit for awhile, but I’m not going to freeze or starve.”

“But the war hounds-“

“Loki chased most of them off and the rest aren’t in great shape. No one is coming hunting for me any time soon.” Darcy pressed one of Thor’s hands over Jane’s wound. “Get her out of here.”

“Convergence…” Jane muttered. “Readings…jack-booted thug stole the iPod…”

Thor grimaced at Jane’s rapidly deteriorating mental state. “Alright. I’ll send someone for you.”

“Hurry?” Darcy asked, shrinking a little, and feeling more than a little guilty for asking for such a thing when Jane was obviously in much more urgent danger.

“Of course,” Thor reassured her. He scooped Jane up into his arms and nodded at the door. “Barricade that behind me when I go.” He hesitated. “You’re sure about this?”

“Dude. Don’t give me the option, okay? My courage is only going to hold out so long. Get out of here.”

Thor nodded and swept out of the safehouse without another word. Darcy watched him swing Mjolnir and lift into the sky, spiriting away her best friend and all of her hope.

Once they were above the clouds and out of sight, she did as Thor had asked and dragged the table in front of the door, positioning it just under the door knob. She cleaned up the spent medical supplies, trying not to think about how much blood Jane had lost on the floor of this dingy safehouse in the middle of nowhere Siberia. Biting back tears with each shaky breath, she did a quick check of the remaining supplies and the batteries powering the lights and the heat. There was a small wood-burning fireplace as well, not that Darcy could get back outside to collect any. She pulled a few blankets from the chest in the corner, grabbed the only three books off the shelf, powered down everything she dared to save power, then settled on the small sofa to wait. She wrapped herself in the blankets and looked at the book titles.

“So my options are ‘How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe,’ ‘Dark Matter,’ or-“ She squinted at the remaining title, so repeatedly read and battered that it was almost illegible. She cracked it open to look for the title page and laughed. “‘The Lost Hero.’ Someone has taste, as least. Percy Jackson and company for the win.” 

The wind howled outside, causing strange battering sounds to echo through the small space as snow and ice hit the roof and windows. Darcy curled a little further into her blankets. 

“Merry Christmas to me,” she muttered, and started to read.

* * *

A few pages after Leo repaired Festus, a loud crash broke Darcy’s concentration. She froze, barely daring to breathe. The dog-things that had attacked Jane, Loki, and her earlier had the eerie ability to sense movement in the air, making any movement a target for attack. 

The room was silent, save the rattling of the windows from the wind outside, until another crash echoed through the night.

“Snow,” she breathed, laughing a little to herself as she realized the source of the sound. 

The radio on the table crackled to life, buzzing with interference and making the voice on the other end hard to understand. 

_“-kick one to-“ bzzzzzt “-two, copy?”_

Darcy grabbed the radio and double checked the frequency before pressing the button. She was on the Avengers emergency channel. She should be safe.

In theory.

“Say again? You’re breaking up.”

_Bzzzzzzt “-on, don’t make me say it again, it was stupid enough the first time.”_

Darcy squinted at the channel again. What idiot did they have broadcasting on this thing?

“Buddy, look-”

_“-you? How’s my safehouse-” bzzzzzzt “-my books? You lose my place, you and me are gonna have words, you got that?”_

Darcy racked her brain for any clue as to who was on the other end of the radio. This was Siberia. The only people crazy enough to stash safehouses out here were Natasha and - 

Oh. Oh no.

Darcy scrambled to the window and moved the curtain infinitesimally so she could peek out into the snow

_“I saw that.”_

Darcy jammed her thumb into the button to cut off anything else he might say.

“Where are you?”

_“Open your eyes and look.”_

Darcy scanned the horizon, but saw nothing but snow all around. It had finally stopped falling, and the sun was making a valiant attempt to peek through the clouds, but there still had to be at least a few feet of snow on the ground. Movement caught in the corner of her eye and she pressed her cheek against the cold window to get a better look.

Just cresting the hill was the Winter Soldier himself. James Buchanan Barnes, complete with little diamond mask and holding his absurd (and admittedly terrifying) gun aloft.

And he was riding a polar bear.

* * *

“You rode a _polar bear_?” Izzy interrupted.

“He was not riding a polar bear,” Darcy sighed, her expression long-suffering.

“I was _absolutely_ riding a polar bear,” Bucky argued. “Who’s story is this, huh?”

“Oh pardon me,” Darcy grinned. “Do go on.”

Bucky cleared his throat and looked at Izzy, tucked into her bed, surrounded by stuffed animals, while the twinkle lights from her miniature Christmas tree shone on her face. Izzy’s eyes were wide, but she was blinking a little more rapidly than usual - his daughter’s tell that she was far more tired than she was willing to let on.

“Ah….maybe we’ll continue the story in the morning, huh? Time for all the good little girls to go to sleep, so Santa can bring their presents, yeah?”

“Daaaaaaaaad,” Izzy whined. “But the story’s not done.”

“I know, baby girl,” Bucky said, caressing her hair gently and leaning in to give her a good night kiss. “But Santa’s new armour from Uncle Tony just texted Mom to let her know that he’s already buzzed our house twice and couldn’t stop because you were still awake!”

Izzy looked confused. “Uncle Tony built armour for Santa?”

“Yep. You should ask him about it when we see him tomorrow. In front of everyone at dinner. He’ll love to tell you all about it.”

Darcy raised her eyes to ceiling, but said nothing. Bucky grinned back at her then gave Izzy one more good night kiss. “Sleep tight, baby girl.”

“Night night, Daddy.”

Darcy leaned in and tucked the covers around Izzy a little more closely. “Merry Christmas, doodlebug,” she whispered as she gave her daughter a good night kiss. Izzy hummed sleepily and rolled over, kicking half of her small stuffed menagerie off her bed and onto the floor. Darcy crept out of the room and mostly closed the door, leaving it open just a crack, then followed Bucky into the kitchen.

“Polar bear, huh?” Darcy asked, straight-faced.

Bucky shrugged. “You and I remember it differently, that’s all.”

Darcy gave him an unimpressed look. “I would remember if there had been a polar bear involved in meeting my husband.”

“You sure about that?” Bucky teased as he poured milk in a pan to warm for hot chocolate. “With all the aliens and weirdness you’d seen at that point, you sure it didn’t just escape your notice?”

“You’re incorrigible,” Darcy laughed. “You arrived via snow machine 8 hours after Thor left with Jane. We got snowed into that damn safehouse for three days and ate cold rations while arguing over who’s turn it was to read The Lost Hero.”

Bucky tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pan a few times, then set it aside and moved closer to his wife, caging her between him and the counter. “I was getting to that part.”

Darcy rolled her eyes as she tugged him closer. “Izzy asked for your favorite Christmas story and that’s what you came up with?”

“No, Izzy asked for my ‘first most favoritest Christmas story.’”

“Okay?”

Bucky nudged her nose with his own. “Every Christmas has a story and every Christmas with you is my favorite. That just happened to be the first one.”

Darcy’s eyes softened and she smiled. “We were stuck in a blizzard in Siberia.”

“Yep.”

“It was -5 outside.”

“Yep.”

“We missed Christmas entirely, got waylaid in Cardiff, and didn’t make it back to New York until New Years.”

“You made cold rations edible. You drew a deck of cards and taught me how to play Snap. We took turns reading one of my favorite books out loud. It was the best Christmas I’d had in _decades_.”

Darcy appeared to chew on that thought for a moment. “It was kinda nice, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“I’d really rather not repeat it.”

Bucky laughed. “Agreed. Good thing for us, every Christmas since has only gotten better.”

Darcy hummed, clearly not entirely buying what he was selling, but indulging him regardless. “So you don’t want to fly out of here tonight, head for that old safehouse for a repeat?”

“I mean...I am looking forward to Izzy asking Tony about the Iron Santa armour tomorrow, but you know me. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Darcy snorted, then covered her mouth to stifle her laughter. “Iron Santa,” she giggled. “That’s gonna go well.”

“Tony will be thrilled.”

“Tony will be _tempted_.”

Bucky shrugged. “Then maybe next year, we’ll get to re-enact that first Christmas.”

Darcy raised an eyebrow. “Because we’re living in your old safehouse hiding from evil robot Santa?”

“Exactly.”

Darcy sighed. “Well, at least I have some advance notice so I can pack.”

Bucky laughed and released her, turning back to tend to the hot chocolate before it burned. “If Izzy had asked you to tell her your favorite Christmas story, what story would you have told?” The old insecurity flared in his chest - Darcy had lived a normal life before all this after all. While all of Bucky’s happy memories involved Darcy and later Izzy, she had a lifetime of happy Christmases to choose from. 

Darcy came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle, pressing a kiss between his shoulder blades. “I’d tell her about the time her Uncle Loki got me stuck in a snowstorm. How I missed everything I’d planned for that year but still had the best Christmas ever - sitting in a cold room with a grumpy soldier who pretended to laugh at my stupid jokes and choked down my attempts at cooking.”

Bucky blinked a few times to clear the tears from his eyes. He didn’t want to spill the hot chocolate, after all. He finished pouring the treat and handed Darcy her mug. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “Who else can say they met their soulmate while riding a polar bear?”

Bucky laughed, a wet sound that betrayed how emotional he’d gotten in the last few moments. “So we’re sticking with me riding a polar bear, huh?”

“Hell no. I’m telling the story, _I_ get to ride the polar bear.”

Bucky was helpless to resist that. He leaned in and kissed her. “I love you.”

“Damn right. I’m awesome. I ride polar bears.”

Bucky laughed again and pulled her close as she wrapped her hands around her hot chocolate and snuggled into his side. “My badass wife. Voracious reader, spectacular cook, the best mother in the entire universe, _and_ she wrangles polar bears in her spare time.”

Darcy preened for a moment, then settled back against him. “You think this Christmas will have a story worth telling?”

“Yes.”

Darcy nodded. “Then we should get to it. Iron Santa’s bound to buzz the perimeter again soon.”

Bucky nodded towards their bedroom. “You go ahead, I’ll clean this up and be right behind you.”

Darcy leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. “Merry Christmas, Bucky.”

“Merry Christmas.”


End file.
